S&P 500

The S&P 500 is an index of roughly 500 large companies listed in the United States, weighted by market value, so the largest companies move it the most. A committee selects the members against published criteria rather than a strict ranking of the 500 biggest. Between them these companies account for a large share of the value of the American stock market, which is why the index stands in for it in conversation.

Why it matters

Most European portfolios end up correlated with this index whether or not anybody planned it, because world trackers hold a heavy American weight and popular single stocks are American too. That makes the S&P 500 the closest thing there is to a default reference point. Two versions of it are published, one counting only prices and one counting dividends as well, and only the second is a like-for-like comparison with a portfolio that keeps its own dividends.

How BullBenchmark shows it

The dashboard opens with your return set against the S&P 500 over the period your money was actually in the market, computed from your own deposits and trades rather than from a start date we picked. Every row in the positions table carries the same index comparison, so a single holding can be read against the market as well as the portfolio as a whole. You can inspect both levels in the live demo, which runs on a sample portfolio of five holdings across two brokers.

Related terms

Benchmark · Nasdaq 100 · Total return

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